Client and Attorney Testimonials

What Clients Say

About two months before this writing, I was a proud first-time owner of a brand new Corvette Stingray, which I laboriously researched, ordered, and waited 2.5 months to have delivered.  This event was the pinnacle of my car hobby – even over my earlier car projects featured in Hot Rod and High Performance Pontiac magazines.

The dream was shattered when a car wash employee driving my Corvette lost control and crashed into a shed and brick wall.  The incident was heartbreaking to say the least, with visible evidence of a collapsed passenger side front suspension, fractured wheel, demolished quarter panel and light assembly, and other exotic parts.  To make matters worse, the car wash owner refused to provide insurance information and admit full liability.

Compounding those matters was the first body’s shop’s unwillingness to properly assess the car’s true damage.  At the time, I was also unaware of the possibility that my car was a total economic loss in view of factors like diminished value, loss-of-use, and realistic time to repair the vehicle.  At this point, I thought having my car declared a “total” would’ve been a good outcome given the level of damage and that I haven’t even submitted my first payment.  Yet I had no idea how to go about pressing the issue, because the body shop actually wanted to fix the car and my insurance company who initiated the assessment process said I was on my own with respect to other matters, like pursuing diminished value from the responsible party.

Thankfully, before the case progressed too far in the wrong direction, I found Alex Gilburg as a referral from a prominent diminished value specialist.  Mr. Gilburg discussed the roadmap of possibilities (which included car repair and diminished value versus totaling the car) and what my goals and expectations were.  After retaining Mr. Gilburg, he quickly put the case on track by convincing the responsible party to submit their insurance information.  Then the vehicle was transferred to a quality body shop which was not a puppet of the insurance company.  I learned this was the foundation to optimizing my outcome.

He then put the liability issue to rest and proceeded with a strategy which maximized the settlement within the boundaries of the law and scope of my objectives; my objectives were to have the car totaled and receive fair loss-of-use restitution.  Thanks to Mr. Gilburg’s experience and even creativity, the insurance company of the responsible party declared my car a total and paid market rates on loss-of-use for all days from loss to settlement.

It’s important to realize the dependence of possible avenues on the time elapsed from the moment of loss.  Had I waited a bit longer to contact Mr. Gilburg, and my car’s repair process commenced, then the possibility of totaling my car would’ve faded, and I would’ve been faced with the lingering hassle of coping with a car that was previously severely damaged.  Speaking of time, all this was accomplished within approximately a month, which is far quicker than many who go at it on their own, even with help from a flat-fee diminished value/loss-of-use internet service, only to have fruitless exchanges with insurance companies drag on and eventual use of a lawyer to pursue a smaller window of actions.  My settlement was above my initial hopes without Mr. Gilburg, and it provided me with sufficient resources to reproduce my purchase and compensate for other aspects of this inconvenience.

I work in the producer and service industry serving major science and technical entities of my community.  Hence, I can recognize excellence when I see it.  As complicated as my case was, Mr. Gilburg handled everything with aplomb and was always tuned in on the big picture.  He weighed the merits of taking one branch of action versus another, to which he proactively communicated to me.  All this went a long way in reassuring me on an otherwise very traumatic event.  Finally, Mr. Gilburg was a great pleasure to work with.

I highly recommend Mr. Gilburg for resolving matters similar to mine and am glad I didn’t risk my health from stress trying to tackle this on my own or with another “expert” where a more adverse result was probable.

-Eric Kang, Ph.D., aerospace and defense industry physics simulation toolkit software developer